In the box, there was a small circle of light that you could actually trace with your hand. In most settings, lamp light was nebulous and decreased gradually from its source, but in that box, in the cold, the light of small kerosene lamp spread at uniform intensity the approximate distance of hula hoop around its base, cutting off into pitch black. Eric warmed his hands over the lamp. He didn't notice the signs of cold anymore; he didn't shiver expect in harsh wind, the numbing of his ears and fingers, a process that had once been excruciatingly gradual, now occurred as suddenly as the light cut off from it's circle. He no longer took notice of his visible breath.

It was a neatly furnished box, or set of boxes, actually, since Eric had the day before secured snuggly atop his original fridgedare box a slightly larger section of four cardboard panels wrapped with trash bags and fastened together with silver duct tape. The makeshift hut, secured to the ground with a set of plastic tent spikes at all times except when Eric was entering or exiting, was one of the more opulent homes in the area, the former Campus Field C and present outdoor communal living facility for public aid students who could not afford indoor housing. The state had been kind enough, the year before, to furnish the lot with a heated water pump, replacing the well that had been in use for years before and ensuring the students who lived in the area that they would have dignity of liquid water even when it was well below freezing. Plans to place such a pump in the other two outdoor housing lots were stalled by a communicative error on behalf of the student government towards the dean's office the spring before, however, and so residents from those lots would at all hours of the night would tramp noisily around Eric's box, located nearest the water pump, to fill their buckets.

Eric's personal possessions were as follows: a battery operated hot plate on which his three daily meals, generously provided by a grant from the Hart Foundation, were heated, a chamber pot, two kerosene oil lamps, a box of matches, a shelf containing books and other various class texts, a cup filled with yellow pencils and disposal ink pens, a framed picture of Eric's family taken four years ago, a battery powered digital display alarm clock, a set of basic flatware, a cup for drinking, and two sets of clothing along with the one he was, at the present time, wearing. Aside from the picture, and his second, insulating cardboard sheathe, everything in Eric's box had been given to him on a rent-to-own basis by the university. In exchange for these luxuries, he gave half of his pay, after taxes, to the campus. He worked the humane legal maximum of thirty-nine hours a week at Wal-Mart, two miles away, along with taking the scholarship minimum/maximum 18 class hours per week. He had to maintain a 3.0 grade average if he wished to keep his commodious lifestyle come spring semester.

What money he did not pay to taxes to fund the military and education nor to his school to fund education he spent supplementing his Hart Foundation meal packets with deli meat and candy on break at work (he had been told this was an infraction of campus policy, but most everybody else did the same) and paying typists to transcribe his hand-written essays into acceptably formatted documents since, due to concerns of overcrowding, scholarship students were no longer allowed to utilize school computer facilities. The rest he saved and carried with him at all times. Near the center of his lamp's perfect circle of heat and light he kneeled over a yellow legal pad, scratching with his state subsidy pen notes on an essay he was to hand in to his typist on his walk to work. He had to get going in about fifteen minutes.
The paper was about the Second World War and its effect on the economies of the countries that did not participate.

He should have been scanning for errors and misspellings, things that his personal typist would not have taken care of unless he paid an additional fee that was out of his reach,